When dawn broke, all were startled to see a mothership hovering high over the temple spire. It must have arrived sometime during the night. As the sun rose, the large craft slowly descended to the cries of prayers from the humans below. What those humans didn’t know was that this was not Aspasia’s ship, but Artad’s, coming to enact the last part of the first stage of the Atlantis Truce.
Surprisingly, the mothership did not dock with the temple spire, but slid to the side, coming down over a large field outside the city walls. A cargo door opened and a gangplank extended to the ground. From his vantage point halfway up the ship’s mast, Gwalcmai could see this and he relayed these happenings to Donnchadh.
“What is happening now?” Donnchadh asked. “Is anyone coming out?”
“No,” Gwalcmai said. “There is no activity. Some people are gathering round the field, but no activity on the mothership.”
Donnchadh frowned. She turned to the ship’s captain. “It is time for us to go. The sun is up.”
The captain merely nodded at her, then issued orders to his men. The lines were untied from the dock and oars were manned. To the slow, steady beat of the ship’s master’s drum, they moved away from the dock.
“Two men are going up the gangplank,” Gwalcmai reported. “They’ve gone inside.”
Once they were clear of the dock and shore, the captain issued orders and the sail was unfurled. Gwalcmai swungaside as the boom came down the mast, narrowly missing him. He put his free hand over his eyes.
“They’ve come back out,” he said. “They’re gesturing for others to come on board.”
“I would go faster,” Donnchadh said to the captain.
“The people are rushing the ship,” Gwalcmai reported. “Thousands of them.” He looked down. “What is happening?”
“One of the Airlia is gathering his crop,” Donnchadh said.
Aspasia had returned to Atlantis during the night on the saucer. He’d gathered the last of the Airlia under his command in a hangar underneath the palace, where they boarded the seven Talons he had recalled to Earth. In the command center of his Talon, Aspasia could see, via monitors in the spire, Artad’s mothership loading humans on board. That was not part of the truce, but Aspasia knew that Artad had watched his dispersal and was countering it in his own way. Move — countermove. Even as he watched, the gangplank suddenly began to withdraw into the ship and the cargo door abruptly shut, cutting in half a few desperate souls clinging to the ship.
“Lift,” Aspasia ordered.
The roof of the hangar slid open and the Talons shot up, away from Earth.
Donnchadh could see the departing Talons as easily as Gwalcmai. They could also see the mothership gaining altitude.
“Come down,” she called out to her husband.
The ship was now about five kilometers away from the outer ring of Atlantis. On the land, people looked up at the massive mothership above them in fear, all sensing that something was going to happen. Supplicant priests who had not been converted or taken by Aspasia led crowds in desperate prayers. Warriors held up spears, swords, and shields in fruitless displays of defiance. The few remaining ships rapidly put to sea, their decks crowded with those who had realized too late their plight.
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai stood side by side near the stern of the ship, watching and waiting. They could feel in the air the same thing the people on Atlantis did — an electric charge as if a large thunderstorm were coming.
Donnchadh drew a sharp breath as a bright golden light raced along the black surface of the mothership from rear to front. She had seen this before and knew what was coming.
“Faster,” she called out to the captain.
The golden light seemed to gather at the nose of the mothership, then pulsed downward in a half-mile-wide beam, passing through the city and into the ground below with no apparent effect.
Once more the light ran along the outside of the mothership, gathered, then pulsed down. And again. Donnchadh found herself counting, the scientist in her taking notes. Ten times.
Then there was absolute stillness for several seconds.
Donnchadh’s hand found Gwalcmai’s. She squeezed tight.
The earth beneath Atlantis exploded.
Aspasia had a view of what was happening on the front screen of the control room of his Talon. He’d watched Artad’s mothership fire ten times, knowing exactly what was coming. The Airlia had extensively studied the evolution of planetary structure. The weapon Artad was using against Atlantis had been designed to tap into the power that resided deep inside the planet and bring it upward.
The shock wave from the explosion killed almost everyone on the island instantly. The handful who survived the initial blast died horrible deaths as a wave of magma sprayed forth in a fiery froth. The entire landmass that had been Atlantis initially lifted upward almost two hundred meters from the explosion, then imploded. The ocean absorbed both the explosion and implosion, giving birth to a tsunami of unbelievable scale.
On the view screen there was nothing left of Atlantis.
Gwalcmai saw what was coming. “Put your stern directly into the wave,” he yelled to the two men holding the tiller. A ship behind them was hit on an angle and flipped over, disappearing into the wall of water. The rear of their ship lifted as the base of the front of the tsunami reached them. Hit square on, it rode up the front, the angle growing steeper and steeper. Gwalcmai wrapped an arm around Donnchadh’s waist while he grabbed the railing with the other to prevent them from sliding overboard.
Donnchadh watched helplessly as a screaming sailor tumbled past and disappeared overboard. She felt Gwalcmai’s grip get even tighter around her waist as she held on to the railing with her own hands. They seemed to be rising forever. Donnchadh looked up — the crest was still over a hundred meters above them and they had already gone up, as best she could tell, about seven hundred meters.
“I love you,” she yelled to Gwalcmai.
He nodded, then swung his head from side to side to clear the wet hair from his eyes. “We’ll make it.”
And they did, slowly going from almost vertical to horizontal, riding the top of the massive wave.
“Hold on,” Gwalcmai yelled, not only to Donnchadh but to the sailors clinging to whatever protection they had managed to find.
The ship began to slide down the less steep side of the wave. It took well over a minute before they were finally off the wave. It was moving away from them, a wall of water that took up the entire horizon. All around the ship, the ocean was littered with bodies and debris. Gwalcmai slowly let go of Donnchadh’s waist. They both looked over the stern of the ship. Where Atlantis had been there was nothing but debris-filled water.
Donnchadh turned to Gwalcmai and spoke to him in their native tongue. “A truce, Gwalcmai.”
Gwalcmai nodded. “They are neutralized here. They are no longer Gods.”
“For the time being.”
“Time is a valuable commodity, Donnchadh. We didn’t have it, but maybe things will be different here. We have helped accomplish the first stage of our mission. The Airlia have fought among themselves and both sides, in essence, have lost.”
Donnchadh frowned. “But neither side has been defeated. And you know this truce is a farce. Both will try to use Guides and Shadows to—”
Gwalcmai held a hand up. “We’ve done what we can. Which is more than we could have hoped for. We have gained time for the people on this world. And we will be around to help in the final war when it does come.”